The Local Search Landscape
Marchex has published a primer on the local search space, outlining the landscape of ad providers and publishers.
Marchex has published a primer on the local search space, outlining the landscape of ad providers and publishers.
Local search, and local online media in general, is one of the hottest topics in the industry right now. Analysts are falling over themselves to predict just how many billions of dollars in revenue local will represent in five years. New local advertising options seem to appear every day from a major search engine, specialty local search engine or local city guide, yellow pages provider, or local newspaper.
The challenge for search marketers is knowing what offerings are available for their clients, and which ones are most appropriate. They also need to understand the market enough to put it into terms their clients can understand. That’s the goal of a new report from Marchex, Unlocking the Potential of the Local Internet.
The document is a 12-page primer on the market, according to Matthew Berk, lead search architect at Marchex. Berk, a former search analyst with Jupiter Research, joined Marchex last year when it acquired Open List, a local search technology company he founded.
“We wanted to clear the air, and get realistic about the local space. There’s been a lot of rhetoric, and it’s hard for marketers to make heads or tails of it,” Berk said. “We looked at the things that might confuse a marketer, and tried to simplify them.”
The report breaks search destinations down into five categories:
The differences between the different models comes down to four variables: content, data, search and functionality. There is no “best” combination for all sites, Berk said, but there are ideal combinations for a particular niche or site. How well a site manipulates these variables to suit its goals will shape the consumer experience on the site, and determine how successful they are, Berk said.
The most important task a local site must accomplish in order to succeed is to build a critical mass of both advertisers and of local traffic. “Building traffic is easy. Building relevant traffic is difficult,” Berk said. “To have traffic and a network of advertisers is very hard to achieve.”
Berk outlines seven types of local advertising providers in the report, some of which are the same as the local destinations:
Again, Berk said there is no one right answer. In fact, the key is to offer a broad range of products, to meet the needs of the many different types of local advertisers, he said.
“One local merchant may want clicks to their Web site, but another only wants to get phone calls. Just like there are lots of use cases for consumers looking for local information, there are lots of use cases for local advertisers trying to bring leads in from online advertising,” Berk said.
For search marketers, Berk suggests that education is important, first for the search marketers themselves, so they know what is available in the market. The educated marketer can then go to a client and offer them a combination of services that meet their needs, he said.
To help provide that education, Marchex has launched a new blog, LocalPoint, written by Berk and others involved in local search at Marchex.
“Education is the biggest part of what’s going to make this meaningful for both the advertiser and search marketers,” Berk said. “They need to know what to say to a local business about the Internet, and they need to know what that local business wants.”
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